Elon Musk is considered as a real-life Tony Stark from Marvel’s Iron Man comics for his role in cutting-edge companies including Space X, a space exploration company that holds the first private contracts from NASA for resupply of the International Space Station, and the electric car company Tesla.

During an interview at the AeroAstro Centennial Symposium, talking about computer science, AI, space exploration and the colonisation of Mars. Elon Musk has spoken out against artificial intelligence (AI), declaring it the most serious threat to the survival of the human race.

“With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon”

Musk said “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful,” . “I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.”

“With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like – yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon. Doesn’t work out,” said Musk.

Musk is one of the high-profile investors, alongside Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and the actor Ashton Kutcher, in Vicarious, a company aiming to build a computer that can think like a person, with a neural network capable of replicating the part of the brain that controls vision, body movement and language.